1.Introduction

Effective management of linguistic recycling in research writing represents both a challenge and an opportunity. When managed well, it has benefits for the citing writer11.We have adopted Groom’s (2000)Groom, N. (2000) Attribution and averral revisited: Three perspectives on manifest intertextuality in academic writing. In P. Thompson (Ed.), Patterns and perspectives: Insights into EAP writing practice (pp. 14–25). Reading: Center for Applied Language Studies. convention of using ‘writer’ for the person citing or quoting and ‘author’ for the person cited or quoted. (see Jurgens, Kumar, Hoover, McFarland, & Jurafsky, 2018Jurgens, D., Kumar, S., Hoover, R., McFarland, D., & Jurafsky, D. (2018) Measuring the evolution of a scientific field through citation frames. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 6, 391–406. s) and, more obviously, for the cited author. As Latour (1987)Latour, B. (1987) Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. observed, being cited is beneficial for authors even when the citing writer seeks to attack a position, cast doubt on the interpretation of a finding or dispute a conclusion drawn. In this paper, we explore the role of linguistic recycling in academic conflict. We are concerned with a particular instance of linguistic recycling that has received less attention in the academic discourse literature, namely, direct quotation or “manifest intertextuality,” as Fairclough (1992)Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press. calls it. Although conflict is our principle focus, we are also interested in what kinds of quoting strategies are used to support and critique the work of others. Since explicit expression of discrepancy often produces a retaliation of some kind, we focus on authors’ responses to quotation of their work by both supporters and detractors. We suggest that certain quotation strategies produce stronger affective reactions from authors than others and are, therefore, more likely to elicit a retaliatory response.

The study we present here concerns the social dimensions of academic life and, more specifically, research publication. More specifically still, we are concerned with how citation and quotation act as indicators of social and academic affiliations and as practices implicated in the inception and continuation of academic conflict. We draw on social network theory, as articulated by Milroy (1980)Milroy, L. (1980) Language and social networks. Oxford: Blackwells. and Milroy and Milroy (1985)Milroy, J. & Milroy, L. 1985 Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics, 21(2), 339–384. , in relation to the mechanisms of language change in speech communities. Bex (1996)Bex, T. (1996) Variety in written English: Texts in society: Societies in text. London: Routledge. suggests that social network theory also provides a lens through which to view discourse communities. As is well known, in social network theory a distinction is drawn between close-knit or ‘multiplex’ social networks as opposed to loose-knit or ‘uniplex’ networks. While members of close-knit networks are interconnected in many ways, connections among members of loose-knit networks are less dense, communication between members may be less frequent and rights to participate in communicative events may be less evenly distributed. In our study, we illustrate how membership of networks of the two types acts on scholarly writers’ participation in academic debate.

We begin by reviewing the literature on explicit intertextuality in academic text, both as citation and quotation. We also briefly review studies of quotation in linguistic philosophy, rhetoric, and pragmatics. We then describe the first phase of our study, which involved examining instances of direct quotation, arriving at a taxonomy of quoting strategies, and assessing our responses to these uses of our actual words. We go on to explore quotation of papers expressing opposing views on a major area of debate in the English for research publication purposes (ERPP) literature, namely whether or not scholars who use English as an additional language (EAL) are at a disadvantage when submitting their work for publication in comparison to those for whom English is a first language. We examine the results of a questionnaire seeking the responses of the key figures in this debate to instances of direct quotation of their work.

2.Legitimate and illegitimate linguistic recycling in research writing

Mismanagement of linguistic recycling can damage or, in the worst of cases, destroy an academic reputation; it can cost a student a grade or even a degree. Given the high stakes involved, it is not surprising that illegitimate recycling in the form of plagiarism, be it inadvertent or deliberate, has been a focus of attention for both applied linguists (see, for example, Flowerdew & Li, 2007Flowerdew, J. & Li, Y. (2007) Language re-use among Chinese apprentice scientists writing for publication. Applied Linguistics, 28, 440–465. ; Pecorari, 2008Pecorari, D. (2008) Academic writing and plagiarism: A linguistic analysis. London: Continuum.; Shi, 2004Shi, L. (2004) Textual borrowing in second language writing. Written Communication, 21, 171–200. , 2010Shi, L. (2010) Textual appropriation and citing behaviours of university undergraduates. Applied Linguistics 31. ) and researchers in scientific ethics (see Roig, 2010Roig, M. (2010) Plagiarism and self-plagiarism: What every author should know. Biochemia Medica, 20(3), 295–300. ). Examination of how professional writers legitimately introduce the voices of others into their texts is also a major area of research inquiry. Many of the published studies, among the earliest of which are Thompson and Ye (1991)Thompson, G., & Ye, Y. (1991) Evaluation of the reporting verbs used in academic papers. Applied Linguistics, 12, 365–382. and Hyland (2000)Hyland, K. (2000) Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing. Harlow: Longman., show that citation practices vary across disciplines. Findings provide the basis for training materials designed to function as an antidote to the heavily sanctioned erroneous textual borrowings of students and early career scholars.

Citations also occupy our attention because they are increasingly given a central role in research assessment procedures. It is obviously of interest to researchers to discover why others cite their work in order to better position themselves to attract citations, particularly, though not exclusively, those that signal positive evaluations of their research. Applied linguists such as Harwood (2009)Harwood, N. (2009) An interview-based study of the functions of citations in academic writing across two disciplines. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 497–518. and Hyland and Jiang (2017)Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. (Kevin) (2017) Points of reference: Changing patterns of academic citation. Applied Linguistics, 40(1), 64–85. as well as sociologists of science (see Erikson & Erlandson, 2014Erikson, M. G., & Erlandson, P. (2014) A taxonomy of motives to cite. Social Studies of Science, 44, 625–637. for a review) have sought to arrive at taxonomies of writers’ motivations for citing. Others working in the field of bibliometrics, among them Willett (2013)Willett, P. (2013) Readers’ perceptions of authors’ citing behavior, Journal of Documentation, 69, 145–56. , have focused on readers’ understanding of these motivations, drawing on interview data from uninvolved expert readers.

3.Linguistic recycling as quotation in research writing

Linguistic recycling as direct quotation of previously published research has received less attention from applied linguists – a notable exception being Petrić’s (2012)Petrić, B. (2012) Legitimate textual borrowing: Direct quotation in L2 student writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(2), 102–117. examination of master’s students’ quotation practices. More recently, Verheijen (2015)Verheijen, L. (2015) The language of quoting in academic writing. Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4(1), 101–121. compared the quoting practices of learners of English for academic purposes with those of established scholarly writers. She provides a summary of citation research in which quotation has also been a focus (pp. 103–4). This increased interest in quotation on the part of applied linguists specializing in English for academic purposes (EAP) is further evidenced by the recent development of a system for tagging instances of direct quotation in corpora (Docherty & Mach, 2017Docherty, P., & Mach, T. (2017) The DQMD tag: A system of direct quotation meta-data tagging for EAP corpora. Lingua, 193, 23–35. ).

Aside from the many studies of misquotation of research results, among them Lukić, Lukić, Glunčić, Katavić, Vučenik and Marušić (2004)Lukić, I. K., Lukić, A., Glunčić, V., Katavić, V., Vučenik, V., & Marušić, A. (2004) Citation and quotation accuracy in three anatomy journals. Clinical Anatomy, 17, 534–539. , scholars of scientific ethics do not appear to have concerned themselves with quotations to any extent. Those working in linguistic philosophy, rhetoric and pragmatics, however, have sought to characterize quotation in terms of its functions and effects. Clark and Gerrig (1990)Clark, H. H. & Gerrig, R. J. (1990) Quotations as demonstrations. Language, 66(4), 764–805. , for example, review work on quotation in these fields and argue that quotations as communicative acts are demonstrations rather than descriptions. They enumerate the properties of demonstrations as follows:

(1) they depict rather than describe their referents; (2) they are understood partly through direct experience; (3) they depict their referents from a vantage point; (4) they require the depictive, supportive, and annotative aspects to be decoupled from each other; and (5) they are selective in what aspects they depict.

While much of their argument concerns quotation in spoken interaction, Clark and Gerrig (1990)Clark, H. H. & Gerrig, R. J. (1990) Quotations as demonstrations. Language, 66(4), 764–805. comment that the norm in scholarly articles is to depict the original utterance as it was produced through embedding and, in so doing, to faithfully convey the propositional content of that utterance. They note, however, that there are quotations in academic text that are incorporated rather than embedded. These incorporated quotations present writers with a challenge, as Petrić (2012)Petrić, B. (2012) Legitimate textual borrowing: Direct quotation in L2 student writing. Journal of Second Language Writing, 21(2), 102–117. found in her study, because they involve integrating quoted text with a new co-text. According to Clark and Gerrig (1990)Clark, H. H. & Gerrig, R. J. (1990) Quotations as demonstrations. Language, 66(4), 764–805. , incorporated quotations also depict, but what is depicted is “appropriated for use in the containing utterance” (p. 791). On this basis, they say, these quotations both depict and describe and are, therefore, not strictly speaking pure quotations. We use Clark and Gerrig’s (1990)Clark, H. H. & Gerrig, R. J. (1990) Quotations as demonstrations. Language, 66(4), 764–805. categories in our account of quotation strategies.

4.Academic conflict

Citation and quotation have been shown to play an integral role in academic criticism (hereafter AC) and conflict. Swales’ (1990)Swales, J. M. (1990) Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Create a Research Space (CARS) model drew attention to the way in which academic criticism is used tactically by some writers to foreground their contribution. Having criticized the work of an academic rival, scholarly writers often go on to claim that the study they present fills a “gap” by potentially rectifying the deficiencies they have identified. All the taxonomies of citation motivations we referred to above include academic criticism as one of the strategies and one of the motivations for citing. Salager-Meyer, Ariza, and Zambrano (2003)Salager-Meyer, F., Ariza, M. A. A., & Zambrano, N. (2003) The scimitar, the dagger and the glove: Intercultural differences in the rhetoric of criticism in Spanish, French and English medical discourse (1930–1995). English for Specific Purposes, 22, 223–247. , in their diachronic studies of academic conflict in biomedical sciences research papers, noted a gradual decline in the directness of academic criticism in the course of the 20th century. A study we undertook (Burgess & Fagan, 2002Burgess, S., & Fagan, A. (2002) (Kid) gloves on or off? Academic conflict in research articles across the disciplines. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 44, 79–96.; Martín-Martín & Burgess, 2004Martín-Martín, P. A., & Burgess, S. (2004) The rhetorical management of academic criticism in research article abstracts. Text, 24(2), 171–195. ) added to the dimensions of directness and personalization examined by Salager-Meyer et al. (2003)Salager-Meyer, F., Ariza, M. A. A., & Zambrano, N. (2003) The scimitar, the dagger and the glove: Intercultural differences in the rhetoric of criticism in Spanish, French and English medical discourse (1930–1995). English for Specific Purposes, 22, 223–247. the presence or absence of “writer mediation” (see Cherry, 1998Cherry, R. D. (1998) Ethos versus persona; Self-representation in written discourse. Written Communication, 15, 384–410. ), namely explicit writer agency in the criticism.

All of the studies cited above concern research articles. The most forthright of the AC strategies, namely, writer-mediated, personal, direct criticism is found largely in explicitly evaluative genres such as book reviews, peer reviews, editorials, review articles, and, more recently, blogs. But it is in papers written to rebut a position of another author that we would expect to find the highest incidence of unmitigated, personalized, writer-mediated criticism and of quotation used to frame such criticism. Hunston (2005)Hunston, S. (2005) Conflict and consensus. Constructing opposition in Applied Linguistics. In E. Tognini-Bonelli & G. del Lungo Camiciotti (Eds): Strategies in academic discourse (pp. 1–16). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. calls papers of this kind “conflict articles”. These she describes in the following terms:

Conflict articles are by definition responses to what I will call initiating articles: initiation and response comprise a ‘conflict exchange’. Any article might retrospectively be cast as the initial element in a conflict exchange, although articles so identified do themselves often take a contentious stance and might be said to be deliberately controversial. Unlike exchanges in spoken dialogue, the conflict exchange has no defined end; any number of articles may respond to each other, though in practice the number of moves seems to be three. There may, however, be two (or more) responding moves, produced by different writers.(p. 2)

5.The “linguistic disadvantage” conflict exchange

In our study of quotation and its role in academic conflict we have chosen to focus on a conflict exchange in which opposing positions in relation to a controversy in the research publication literature are articulated. The controversy revolves around the claim that multilingual scholars who write in English face greater hurdles when attempting to publish their work than their peers who are first-language (L1) users of the language. Further, the argument runs, the hurdles these multilingual scholars face arise as a result of their status as users of English as an additional language. Gatekeepers, such as peer reviewers and journal editors, find linguistic evidence of this status and block or delay publication of these authors’ papers on linguistic grounds.

A paper by Flowerdew (2008)Flowerdew, J. (2008) Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s ‘Stigma’’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 77–86. entitled “Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s “Stigma” tell us?” occupies the first pages of a special issue of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes (JEAP), immediately after the introduction written by the guest editors (Cargill & Burgess, 2008Cargill, M., & Burgess, S. (2008) Introduction to the special issue English for research publication purposes . Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(2), 75–76. ). This paper represents the first move or initiating paper of the conflict exchange we examine. The first response (Casanave, 2008Casanave, C. P. (2008) The stigmatizing effect of Goffman’s stigma label: A response to John Flowerdew. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 264–267. ) was published in the same volume of JEAP later that year. Flowerdew then replied to Casanave in the next volume of the journal (Flowerdew, 2009Flowerdew, J. (2009) Goffman’s stigma and EAL writers: The author responds to Casanave. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8, 69–72. ). There were then no further moves in the conflict exchange until 2016 when Hyland (2016a)Hyland, K. (2016a) Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69. published a paper in the Journal of Second Language Writing (JSLW) in which he aligned himself with Casanave in the conflict. Hyland’s paper can be seen as both a response to Flowerdew’s (2008)Flowerdew, J. (2008) Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s ‘Stigma’’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 77–86. initiation paper and as initiating a second conflict exchange, the second move in which is a response paper published by Politzer-Ahles, Holliday, Girolamo, Spychalska, and Harper Berkson (2016)Politzer-Ahles, S., Holliday, J. J., Girolamo, T., Spychalska, M., & Harper Berkson, K. (2017) Is linguistic injustice a myth? A response to Hyland (2016). Journal of Second Language Writing, 34, 3–8. , also published in JSLW. Hyland was then invited to respond to Politzer-Ahles et al. (2016)Politzer-Ahles, S., Holliday, J. J., Girolamo, T., Spychalska, M., & Harper Berkson, K. (2017) Is linguistic injustice a myth? A response to Hyland (2016). Journal of Second Language Writing, 34, 3–8. . This he did (Hyland, 2016bHyland, K. (2016b) Language myths and publishing mysteries: A response to Politzer-Ahles, et al. Journal of Second Language Writing, 34, 9–11. ) in a paper published in the same journal later that same year. Flowerdew, Casanave, and Hyland have continued to address the ‘linguistic disadvantage’ issue in publications that have appeared over the last 12 months (Casanave, 2019Casanave, C. P. (2019) Does writing for publication ever get easier? Some reflections from an experienced scholar. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 35–53). London: Palgrave Macmillan. ; Flowerdew, 2019Flowerdew, J. (2019) The linguistic disadvantage of scholars who write in English as an Additional Language: Myth or reality. Language Teaching, 52(2), 249–260. ; Hyland, 2019Hyland, K. (2019) Participation in publishing: the demoralising discourse of disadvantage. In P. Habibie & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 1–33). London: Palgrave Macmillan. ).

Flowerdew’s (2008)Flowerdew, J. (2008) Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s ‘Stigma’’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 77–86. paper had been cited 250 times at the time of writing, on many occasions by EAL scholarly writers who either explicitly support his views or remain neutral. Casanave’s (2008)Casanave, C. P. (2008) The stigmatizing effect of Goffman’s stigma label: A response to John Flowerdew. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 264–267. response and Flowerdew’s (2009)Flowerdew, J. (2009) Goffman’s stigma and EAL writers: The author responds to Casanave. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8, 69–72. rejoinder have also received a good deal of attention, most often by those who note that the EAL author-disadvantage position is controversial without taking one side or the other. Hyland’s (2016a)Hyland, K. (2016a) Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69. paper attracted, and has continued to attract, attention (148 citations at the time of writing). Some of the citing writers, such as Habibie (2019)Habibie, P. (2019) To be native or not to be native: That is not the question. In P. Habibie, & K. Hyland (Eds.), Novice writers and scholarly publication: Authors, mentors, gatekeepers (pp. 35–53). London: Palgrave Macmillan. and Hultgren (2019)Hultgren, A. K. (2019) English as the language for academic publication: On equity, disadvantage and ‘non-nativeness’ as a red herring. Publications, 7(2), 31. are supportive of Hyland’s position. Aside from the critical response of Politzer-Ahles et al. (2016)Politzer-Ahles, S., Holliday, J. J., Girolamo, T., Spychalska, M., & Harper Berkson, K. (2017) Is linguistic injustice a myth? A response to Hyland (2016). Journal of Second Language Writing, 34, 3–8. , there have also been rejoinders from Subtirelu (2016)Subtirelu, N. (2016) Language privilege: What it is and why it matters. [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://​linguisticpulse​.com​/2013​/06​/26​/language​-privilege​-what​-it​-is​-and​-why​-it​-matters/ and Flowerdew (2019)Flowerdew, J. (2019) The linguistic disadvantage of scholars who write in English as an Additional Language: Myth or reality. Language Teaching, 52(2), 249–260. .

6.Being cited, being quoted: The cited/quoted author’s perspective

We had begun looking into the question of quotation and academic conflict in the course of another study which represented both a return to our earlier interest in AC and a response to what we saw as a gap in the citations literature. Our aim was to extend the work on the citing writers’ motivations, or the ‘uninvolved’ readers’ interpretations of these motivations, to include the cited author’s perspective. For the purposes of research productivity assessments, cited authors are often largely preoccupied with numbers and the international reach of the citations accrued and seldom, in our experience, look closely at citations of their own work. By exploring the cited author’s perspective, we wanted to arrive at a better understanding of the social origins and outcomes of citing.

We took our two most cited publications, Burgess (2002)Burgess, S. (2002) Packed houses and intimate gatherings: Audiences and rhetorical structure. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse (pp. 196–215). London: Longman. and Martín-Martín (2003)Martín-Martín, P. A. (2003) A genre analysis of English and Spanish research paper abstracts in experimental social sciences. English for Specific Purposes 22, 25–43. . The two papers together had accrued some 550 citations. From these, we made a stratified random selection of 30 citations for each paper, thus, drawing into our corpus citations from the entire seventeen-year period. We were able to see patterns of affiliation and to map these affiliations to key academic events in our careers (Burgess & Martín-Martín, 2019Burgess, S., & Martín-Martín, P. A. (2019) Why we cite and are cited: readers’ and writers’ perceptions. Paper presented at the 37th Conference of the Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada (Spanish Association of Applied Linguistics), Valladolid, Spain, March 27–29.). As we examined and attempted to classify these citations of our work, we came across a number of direct quotations. Our initial approach to these was to classify them according the genre of the quoting text (e.g., research article, doctoral dissertation, book), unit of text quoted, how the quoted text is embedded or incorporated into the new text and, finally, what we perceived to be the writers’ motives for quoting rather than paraphrasing or summarizing.

We then turned to our responses to being quoted in what became a pilot study for the research we report here. Prior to conducting the analysis, our somewhat untutored and uncritical position was that it is always pleasing to see one’s actual words enshrined and acknowledged in someone else’s text. Closer scrutiny of the quotations produced some very different reactions, however. Among these were outrage at being quoted as saying what we had not said, irritation at being quoted out of context and thus seeing our argument distorted, and perplexity at having a concept or term apparently attributed to us which we knew was not our original coinage. There were of course, also, feelings of pride and pleasure at having our words apparently identified as especially elegant or precise. Particularly salient for us, though, was our reaction to those few instances of quotation that presaged discrepancy with or criticism of our work. When our words are turned back on us as attack, we may feel defensive and we may respond in kind. We are not high-profile scholars and our views, even when controversial, often fall below the radar. Nevertheless, having acknowledged our emotional responses to those few instances we found, we decided to look more closely at how quotations function to initiate, sustain, and sometimes exacerbate academic conflict.

All three papers in the initial ‘linguistic disadvantage’ conflict exchange included instances of both embedded and incorporated quotation: Flowerdew’s (2008)Flowerdew, J. (2008) Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s ‘Stigma’’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 77–86. paper quotations of Goffman (1959)Goffman, E. (1959) The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday. and (1968)Goffman, E. (1968) Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Harmondsworth/Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pelican/Prentice Hall. (Original edition 1963).; Casanave’s (2008)Casanave, C. P. (2008) The stigmatizing effect of Goffman’s stigma label: A response to John Flowerdew. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 264–267. response, quotations of Flowerdew’s words and of Flowerdew’s quotations of Goffman; and Flowerdew’s (2009)Flowerdew, J. (2009) Goffman’s stigma and EAL writers: The author responds to Casanave. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8, 69–72. response, quotations of Casanave’s (2008)Casanave, C. P. (2008) The stigmatizing effect of Goffman’s stigma label: A response to John Flowerdew. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 264–267. criticism of his position, contrasting her words with supportive responses from EAL scholarly writers. While, in some cases, complete paragraphs are quoted in embedded quotations, in others, the quoted segment is a phrase or even a single noun or adjective. The context of the original use of the phrase (often a single word) is often provided through paraphrase. By incorporating the author’s words into their texts, quoting writers create a new co-text and sometimes a context the quoted author might well wish to challenge. This can involve changes in connotative meaning, the setting up of new equivalences or new relations between propositions. All these strategies construct a different reading of the author’s words. We hypothesized that when this occurred, the authors would have an affective response to the quotation, that is, they would be less comfortable about their words being used and would be more likely to feel a desire to set the record straight.

On the basis of our reactions to the quotations drawn from our papers, we sought to explore how the authors involved in the conflict exchanges above might respond to quotations of their work in the various moves in the conflict exchange and to quotations of their words by supportive and critical writers not immediately involved in the exchange. To that end we arrived at the following research questions:

1. Are authors aware of negative responses to their work and the framing of those responses around direct quotations?

2. Do authors have a negative emotional response to quotations of their work used to frame criticisms?

3. Do quoted authors respond negatively or positively to the quotation strategies regardless of the position (supportive, neutral, or critical) of the quoting writer?

4. Are there quotation strategies that provoke more negative responses from quoted authors?

5. Do authors seek to reinstate their original meanings when the citing writer has imputed a new meaning to their words?

We sought answers to our questions from the three researchers most prominently linked to EAL author-disadvantage debate and most active in the two conflict exchanges.

7.The corpus and the questionnaire

Using Google Scholar, we identified all citations of Flowerdew (2008)Flowerdew, J. (2008) Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s ‘Stigma’’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 77–86. ; Casanave (2008)Casanave, C. P. (2008) The stigmatizing effect of Goffman’s stigma label: A response to John Flowerdew. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 264–267. , and Hyland (2016a)Hyland, K. (2016a) Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69. .22.The corpus of quotations and the sources from which they are drawn are available from the authors on request. We then attempted to access the citing publications, eliminating those where access was denied or payment required. We searched the available texts for direct quotations from the three papers using the search functions in Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat. In the case of Flowerdew (2008)Flowerdew, J. (2008) Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s ‘Stigma’’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 77–86. , we located 31 direct quotations, 12 for Casanave (2008)Casanave, C. P. (2008) The stigmatizing effect of Goffman’s stigma label: A response to John Flowerdew. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 264–267. and 58 for Hyland (2016a)Hyland, K. (2016a) Academic publishing and the myth of linguistic injustice. Journal of Second Language Writing, 31, 58–69. . We prepared a document for each author including a representative sample of quoting strategies (embedded, incorporated supportive, neutral, and critical quotations), reducing the number of quotations sent to each author by approximately a third so as not to burden them unduly. We sought to provide sufficient context around the direct quotation to convey the writer’s intent but did not indicate authorship of the publication from which the quotations were drawn. All three documents included quotations from papers written by the other two authors.

We prepared an explanatory email asking the authors to comment on the quotations from their papers in terms of their reactions to the quotations and the degree to which they reflected their intended meanings, regardless of whether the quoting writer was supportive of their position or not.

8.Authors’ responses to quotation of their work

We refer to the three authors in our analysis only as Author 1, Author 2 and Author 3 rather than identifying them by name. All three responded almost immediately to our email and showed a willingness to comment on the quotations we had selected. They all expressed curiosity about the results of our study, in some cases, noting that they had been unaware of the interest their papers had drawn. None acknowledged having looked at quotations of their work beyond instances where they had been asked to write a response.

I had no idea how much interest the paper had generated. I haven’t read any critiques or related papers except the one I was asked to respond to.(Author 2)

The authors also share an acceptance of critical responses framed around quotations of their work. As one of the authors put it:

…. I don’t get upset about criticism. I might have done earlier in my career but I don’t feel strongly enough about the issues and views expressed here.(Author 2)

Another sees the levelling of criticism and the expression of disagreement as a right:

…it is not a problem if my words are turned back against me and if others do not agree with them – if a view is a matter of opinion or interpretation, then this is every respondent’s right.(Author 1)

Authors 2 and 3 both recognize that even critical citation and quotation of their work has benefits, one of them even choosing to embed a quotation to make the point.

I tend to go along with Oscar Wilde (to mangle his words but follow the idea): It is better to be cited critically than not to be cited at all.(Author 2)

Author 3 is unconcerned even if the critical comment involves misquotation.

My view is that all publicity is good publicity, so I don’t really mind misquoting.(Author 3)

Author 1 observes that misquotation or deliberate distortion have potentially negative consequences for the quoting writer.

…if someone has truly misinterpreted what I have said or gotten something factually wrong, then the mistake is available for public scrutiny and a writer thus contributes to his own reputation, for better or worse.(Author 1)

None of the authors, it has to be said, detected instances of flagrant misquotation of this kind. Author 1 questions the hypothesis that other instances of quotation should provoke negative responses from authors.

…the quotes you have selected are not for the most part misquoted. I am not uncomfortable with how others have quoted or interpreted me unless there are factual mistakes but consider such uses of language to be normal in critical/interpretive academic discourse. Most of the quotes or paraphrases are sufficiently accurate representations of my views.(Author 1)

Sometimes the authors’ comments suggest that they were not always able to recall if the words quoted were the actual words they had used or not. Given the scope of our project, we had not asked our informants to check the accuracy of the quotations against their original texts as we felt this was too great an imposition. One of the authors said as much while expressing irritation at an instance of overly zealous quotation:

This is fine – but why quote the typo – or maybe this was added? I can’t be bothered to check 😊.(Author 2)

There were instances of incorporated quotation that were identified by the authors as marginally more problematic. When a single verb, noun, or adjective had been taken out of the original co-text and then incorporated into the writer’s text, the authors sometimes identified inaccurate paraphrasis. When this occurred, they sought, through their comments, to set the record straight. In some cases, this was because a quoted adjective had been used to qualify a different noun.

I did not say that the article was unsavory. I said that the images of EAL authors were unsavory.(Author 1)

In others, an equivalence the author had not intended had been established.

I do use the term but stigma and intellectual dislocation are not the same thing.(Author 3)

There were multiple instances of these “false” equivalences. In each of these cases, the comment from the quoted author was along the lines of I didn’t say this. X is not the same as Y, as in Author 3’s comment.

On some occasions, writers used scare quoting to distance themselves from a term and combined this with an incorporated quotation. Our informants saw this as making it difficult to separate writers’ words from authors’ words and resulted in unintended meanings being attributed to them.

I didn’t use ‘good’ and ‘acceptable’ in this context, I think, and the main quote implied I did.(Author 2)

The quotes look like I used this term but I don’t think I would have.(Author 3)

Another similar strategy, also seen as problematic, is placing the quotation in a context with new topic content.

Happy enough but I wasn’t talking about online genres but peer reviewed SSCI academic journal articles.(Author 2)

Even in the case of embedded quotation, authors detected problems of distortion in relation to the way their text is used to support a proposition they do not endorse.

I didn’t argue that decisions are not biased – quite the opposite. I said the review system is deeply flawed. I was summarising the evidence from studies of reviewers and editors which says [what is said in the quotation].(Author 2)

Suggests I draw that “conclusion” from the premise stated in the extract. Not the case.(Author 2)

Authors clearly liked to see their main arguments accurately reflected, in most cases, through longer embedded quotations.

I think the long quote captures the idea much better than bits and pieces ones.(Author 2)

They are slightly perplexed, however, when the expression of a proposition marginal to their main argument is quoted verbatim.

Not controversial. Strange to quote it but not a problem with it.(Author 2)

OK but no reference to stigma here.(Author 3)

Even when this occurs, the quotation is sometimes a pleasant surprise.

I like this. Never thought someone would quote it 😊.(Author 2)

The authors generally responded to supportive quotation more positively than quotation used in direct criticism while making an effort to comment on the quotation strategy rather than the illocutionary force of the passage in which it was incorporated or embedded.

I don’t agree with this, but he has used my categories appropriately.(Author 3)

Yes OK – I like the ‘[author 2] claims.’(Author 2)

On the basis of these responses, we can draw the following tentative answers to our research questions:

In the case of the three authors, the answer to this question is that they were not aware unless their attention had been specifically drawn to a conflict paper because they had been asked to respond to it.

All three authors said that they do not have negative emotional responses, seeing criticism and quotation as part of normal academic debate.

Our limited survey suggests that even when the quotation is framed negatively, they are able to identify the strategy and see it as acceptable practice.

Incorporated quotations where equivalences are set up through inaccurate paraphrasis are evaluated negatively by two of the authors.

In the case of conflict exchanges, authors do seek to rectify distortions. Their comments also indicate a desire to regain control of the argument by reinstating the original context or co-text of the quoted text.

9.Discussion

What role, then, does quotation play in the rhetorical management of academic conflict? More to the point, what do our authors’ responses tell us about the role of quotations that we did not already know? All the authors recognize the quotation practices we presented to them as conventional instances of the use of another’s words to critique or support a position. Much of the content of the conflict exchange initiated by Flowerdew’s (2008)Flowerdew, J. (2008) Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman’s ‘Stigma’’ tell us? Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7, 77–86. paper includes quotation and response to those quotations in which the authors seek to regain control of the argument by replacing, with their intended meanings, the meanings quoting writers have imputed to them. As Hunston (2005Hunston, S. (2005) Conflict and consensus. Constructing opposition in Applied Linguistics. In E. Tognini-Bonelli & G. del Lungo Camiciotti (Eds): Strategies in academic discourse (pp. 1–16). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , p. 2) points out, there is no limit to the number of exchanges in a conflict exchange. We would argue that the desire to set the record straight, a desire that all our authors exhibited, is a key element in generating further responses. These responses, in their turn, become initiations of further conflict exchanges. The number of citations these papers have accrued suggests that conflict exchanges attract a sizeable readership. Two of the authors in our study were very much aware of the benefits of commanding the attention of others through the publication of papers that form a part of a conflict exchange. One even acknowledged that the title devised for an article that formed a part of the conflict exchange was intended to function as ‘click bait.’

Even if the quoted authors themselves are untroubled by criticism in which their words are used against them, readers may not be so unperturbed. The debate that this paper has used as an example of conflict is one with implications for many others who research academic discourse. Those who have direct experience relevant to the issue may have already formed an opinion, albeit based on anecdotal evidence and may see themselves attacked vicariously in the conflict exchange. These readers, non-core participants in the exchange, only loosely connected to the authors at the center and with only virtual ties to one another, begin to line up on either side of the debate and may signal their alignment by loyally quoting extended sections of the inner-circle authors’ papers in embedded quotations or by carefully paraphrasing sections of the authors’ texts to frame incorporated quotations. This is done in somewhat the same way as those on the outer edges of a social network seek to imitate the speech patterns of those at the center who innovate and generate change (see Labov, 1973Labov, W. (1973) The linguistic consequences of being a lame. Language and Society, 2, 81–115. and Milroy & Milroy, 1985Milroy, J. & Milroy, L. 1985 Linguistic change, social network and speaker innovation. Journal of Linguistics, 21(2), 339–384. ).

By buying into the debate, these scholarly writers are positioning themselves to potentially attract the attention of those on the other side and will perhaps then see themselves turned into initiators of another conflict exchange. If such an exchange comes about, these authors may succeed in generating more nodes in their network and see themselves cited more frequently, even by their detractors. This, of course, is all to the good in an academic career structure where success is measured in the terms of numbers of citations accrued. We are not arguing that scholarly writers cynically decide to express controversial opinions or take sides in debates such as this with a view to advancing their academic careers, but taking a turn in one of these more heated conversations of the discipline potentially leads to professional benefits that striking out alone on relatively uncharted and uncontested territory does not.

That said, participating actively in the debate is not for the faint hearted. Many who cite these conflict papers choose to sit on the fence, simply signaling their awareness of the existence of the debate without proffering an opinion. The authors in our modest survey are made of sterner stuff or have, perhaps, become battle-hardened. They all denied being stung any more than fleetingly by even the most barbed comments on their work. Author 3, for example, said he had come to “quite like” the phrase “crass hyperbole” applied to one of his publications by another author. The ability to not take such attacks personally is the prize won from repeated experiences of being the target of criticism in long careers punctuated by skirmishes such as the one we refer to in the present study. The less experienced are likely to flinch and run for cover, at least in the short term.

What we do not have access to here are the various back stories that may lie behind the conflict exchange. These may involve experiences in other domains which have played a part in the formation of a stance and offer clues to the strength of a response to an initiation. Author 1, for example, acknowledges being “particularly sensitive to ‘loaded’ words that carry negative connotations.” If we had interviewed rather than surveying our participants, we may well have gained greater insights into these back stories and a better understanding of how conflict arises. The method that Harwood (2009)Harwood, N. (2009) An interview-based study of the functions of citations in academic writing across two disciplines. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 497–518. and Willet (2013)Willett, P. (2013) Readers’ perceptions of authors’ citing behavior, Journal of Documentation, 69, 145–56. used, namely semi-structured interviews, would undoubtedly have produced richer data than we have here. So too would the autoethnographic approach now championed by Canagarajah (2012)Canagarajah, S. (2012) Autoethnography in the study of multilingual writers. In L. Nickoson & M. P. Sheridan (Eds.), Writing studies research in practice: Methods and methodologies (pp. 113–124). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press., among others.

A further limitation is the fact that we surveyed authors in a discipline where there is a heightened awareness of rhetorical practices. Indeed, the three authors have all published extensively on academic discourse and devoted attention to some of the issues we address here. Scholarly writers from other disciplines might have had very different reactions to quotations of their work. Our authors are, furthermore, all senior members of their discourse communities who have had long and successful careers. Relative newcomers still struggling to obtain tenure or even a stable university position might also have offered a very different perspective.

All three authors are L1 users of English. Although we offered to make available to them the sources of the quotations used, none of our informants has asked to be provided with a reference list. We did not give any more than cursory attention to the language backgrounds of the quoting writers, though our analysis of quotations of our own work suggested that L1-using authors are more frequently quoted than multilingual-EAL (English as an additional language) users and that L1-using authors are more likely to be quoted by other L1 users. While we would not wish to overwork a position arrived at in our earlier work (e.g., Burgess, 2002Burgess, S. (2002) Packed houses and intimate gatherings: Audiences and rhetorical structure. In J. Flowerdew (Ed.), Academic discourse (pp. 196–215). London: Longman.) our limited study suggests that the EAL quoting writers may be more likely to avoid an openly critical stance. Looking more closely at who gets quoted by whom and how may also be a line of research worth pursuing.

In answer to our first research question, we found that our quoted authors had not taken much interest in quotations of their work unless their attention had been drawn to them in the course of a conflict exchange. We also noted in our review of the literature that attention had been paid in the scientific ethics literature to inaccurate quotation of research results, particularly in healthcare sciences. It would be interesting to discover how these instances of misquotation were detected if it is not the quoted authors who detect them. When misquotation is uncovered prior to publication it is likely to be due to the careful work of a rigorous peer reviewer or journal editor. Literacy brokers, such as authors’ editors (see Matarese, 2016Matarese, V. (2016) Editing research: The author editing approach to providing effective support to writers of research papers. Medford: Information Today., for an account of the contribution of these professionals) and translators also play their part on occasion when a lack of clarity or coherence in the text they are working on leads them to go back to the source of the quotation.33.We are grateful to Mary Savage, an authors’ editor and translator, for this insight. It would be valuable to draw more systematically on the experience of these professionals in dealing with quotation in the texts they edit and translate.

Translation of quotation is another issue we have not addressed. We found no instances of translations of the quotations taken from our author-informants’ work, though there were translated quotations of our work in the corpus we compiled in our pilot study. We suspect that the relative invisibility of scholarly writers who choose to publish in languages other than English contributed to the fact that we found so few instances of translated quotations. It is, we suggest, difficult to measure the fidelity of translated quotations and more difficult still for quoted authors to detect misquotation of their work if they are not familiar with the quoting writers’ language. For these reasons, it is another area worthy of study and one that contributors to this special issue will have addressed in relation to other domains of discourse beyond the scope of our study.

We would, however, like to close by drawing a few pertinent parallels between our findings and two instances of quotation in popular culture, both of which have come to our attention in the course of preparing this paper.44.We are grateful to Diana Balasanyan for drawing out attention to the first of these and to Mary Savage, once again, for drawing out attention to the second. We would also like to thank both women for their willingness to discuss some of the ideas presented in this paper. The first is an instance of decontextualized quotation, in this case of the Irish writer, Samuel Beckett. An aphorism attributed to Beckett, “Fail again, fail better,” circulates widely in life-coaching circles though often without Beckett being cited. The quotation is used to encourage people to see failure as an opportunity, though the original source of the quotation is anything but encouraging, as Schlottman (2018)Schlottman, A. (2018) Samuel Beckett: Fail Better and “Worstward Ho!”. [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://​booksonthewall​.com​/blog​/samuel​-beckett​-quote​-fail​-better/ shows. She provides an insightful account of how different readings of Beckett’s text have conditioned the various ways in which the quotation has been decontextualized and repurposed. Here, this repurposing is for arguably benign ends and has not initiated a conflict aside from discussion about the origin of the quotation.

Other instances of de- or recontextualized quotation are less benign. They can and do have an impact on the way in which the quoted author is viewed by a wider public. Germaine Greer is an author who Beard (2019Beard, M. (2019) The Greer method. Learning by text or context? [Review of the book On rape by G. Greer]. London Review of Books, 41(20), 12–14., p. 12), in a recent book review, suggests has been the victim of “a combination of misrepresentation and careless (or willful) selective quotation.” As a result, recent responses to one of Greer’s books and a lecture she gave cast her as having “gone soft” on rapists and engaged in “victim blaming.” For these positions Greer has been attacked and vilified. Beard’s careful analysis of how Greer was quoted shows very clearly how linguistic recycling can exacerbate conflict and can make the quoted author the target of the harshest of criticisms. But Beard also suggests that antipathy to Greer may have made the quoting writers feel justified in using the kinds of selective quotation less extreme versions of which we found in the study reported here. Further, Beard (2019Beard, M. (2019) The Greer method. Learning by text or context? [Review of the book On rape by G. Greer]. London Review of Books, 41(20), 12–14., p. 13) argues that this antipathy does not arise as a response to reading “a provocative pamphlet, no more flawed than many others of the genre” but because the writers had heard Greer express controversial views on the transgender community. So, there is a back story, and in this case, because Greer is a very public figure, one to which we do have access.

Towards the end of her book review, Beard (2019Beard, M. (2019) The Greer method. Learning by text or context? [Review of the book On rape by G. Greer]. London Review of Books, 41(20), 12–14., p. 14) characterizes Greer as combining “a tremendous capacity for persuasive argument with an equal capacity to annoy and provoke.” This, Beard sees, as at the core of Greer’s whole approach, quoting the author as saying of one of her more outrageous claims “the mere suggestion will cause an outcry which is one good reason for making it.” All three authors in our study would acknowledge that the conflict exchange we analyze has some parallels with the conflict exchange around Greer’s book: a deliberately controversial paper provokes a strong critical response but, in so doing, opens up a debate – a debate that members of our community needed to hold.

10.Conclusion

Our exploration of linguistic recycling as quotation in academic conflict allows us to tentatively conclude that certain quoting strategies used in academic criticism are more likely to provoke a response. These responses occur in our study as turns in a conflict exchange. Participation in conflict exchanges has, as a side effect, the garnering of citations. Debates around key controversies draw more peripheral members of a discourse community into the conversation in a cyclical process through which papers written by these members also potentially initiate exchanges. In this way, quotation and quoted authors’ responses to quotation play a role in academic conflict as they do when conflict arises in other domains.